


Anomaly

by orphan_account



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: Drabble, Gen, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 02:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>It's so odd that she laughs.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anomaly

It's so odd that she laughs, this bizarre little patch of wonder leaving her as breathless and wide-eyed as any five year old. It was a stroke of luck, she knows, that on this last day of her trip to San Diego she should stumble across such an oddity while wandering through the park. The world is a strange place indeed, and it's very cheering to think so.

Especially America, for some reason.

A metre above the ground, suspended in the air in the tiny clearing at around chest height, are a koi carp and a hot dog. The fish seems fairly unconcerned by its current situation, swimming in lazy spirals around the floating food item and moving for all the world as if it were underwater. Scales shine beneath the dappled sunlight that filters through the sycamores. She follows the path of one of the tiny bubbles that burble from the fish's gills her head craning to watch it rise and disappear among the broad leaves; a glimmer of light among the green and then gone.

Mesmerised, she reaches out to brush her hand against the flicked tail – hesitant, in case the spell will dissolve with a touch – and sees stars. Empty void, only it was filled after all; an infinity of bright and tiny points, stars speckling the endless darkness. And in the midst of all this, a koi carp flitting smoothly around a hotdog with mustard.

It only feels like a moment passes before she pulls her hand away, but the sun has moved and brightened; the shadows have shifted around her. Her fingertips are wet where they had rested against the carp’s side. She realises that she is smiling only from the ache in her cheeks from where she has been standing, beaming at infinity. Her bones are stiff, her muscles ache, and she has never been so happy before.

And, because she’s a tourist and headed back to Scotland tomorrow (where nothing unusual ever happens beyond the occasional burst of sunshine) she takes a photo of the impossible duo in this weird city where she’s already seen three people with blue lips and alabaster skin passing by in the supermarket.

(When she develops the film a week later there isn’t a fish to be seen – just a smudge of blue that seems to have been caught mid-flicker. The hot dog’s still there though, as are the bubbles. Just one of those things, she decides, and blu-tacks the picture onto her wall.

America. What a strange place.)

**Author's Note:**

> I wondered what would happen to the void if/when the Jon ceased to function, and especially to its inhabitants. The idea that they'd pop out of existence made me sad, so... this happened.


End file.
